from the bye-bye-news-content dept

While much of the focus concerning the EU's Copyright Directive have been about Article 13 and the censorship and mandatory filters it will require, an equally troubling part is Article 11, which will create a "snippet" tax on anyone who aggregates news and sends traffic back to the original sites (for free) without paying those news sites. This is dumb for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that this plan has been tried in both Germany and Spain, and failed miserably in both places. Indeed, studies in Spain showed that this law actually did tremendous harm to smaller news sites (which the EU insists this law is designed to help). The latest version we've seen in the EU Copyright Directive is even worse than the laws in Germany and Spain in that it is so vague and so unclear that it is possible to read them to say that using more than a single word will make the aggregator liable for the tax.

In Spain, as you may recall, when that law was passed, Google responded by turning off Google News in Spain entirely, saying that it was impossible to remain in the country under that law. As they noted (and which everyone pushing for these laws always ignores), Google actually doesn't put any advertisements on Google News. It's not monetizing it (despite lies from supporters of these laws that Google is "profiting" off of their work, when Google is actually sending traffic for free). So there were some questions about what Google would do with Google News in Europe if Article 11 becomes law.

As you can see, because the tax applies to using any words from the articles, what a "compliant" Google News looks like is a Google News page where none of the content actually loads. All you get is the names of the publications and nothing else.

Of course, this is going to infuriate supporters of Article 11, who will insist that this is awful and some terrible game that Google is playing. But it's their own fault for writing a law that says this is what you have to do. Supporters will again argue that this is not what they intended -- instead, the whole point of Article 11 is to try to force Google to "license" the news it links to. But these leaked screenshots more or less highlight how the EU Copyright Directive is truly little more than a shakedown of Google. Basically, the entire point of the law is "Google, give money to failing newspapers, or we'll force your News site to look like shit." And Google is suggesting it might just call the EU's bluff on this.

At the very least, this makes it clear that the entire point of the EU Copyright Directive -- especially Articles 11 and 13 -- are a weak attempt to say "Google is successful, therefore, Google should give a lot more of its money to companies that haven't been successful in the internet age." If the EU just named it "the tax Google because our own industries failed to innovate" Directive, it would at least be a bit more intellectually honest.

from the reporting-the-news-is-bad dept

It seems that today you can't spit in the wind without hitting a story about some US drone killing a bunch of people in a country somewhere overseas. Every known drone strike is accompanied by news reports of the location and the number of people killed. Yet, even with all these stories about drone strikes, it can a daunting task for those interested in following them to keep up with them all. So what is a drone enthusiast, or someone just appalled by the frequency of the strikes, to do?

One creative iPhone developer, Josh Begley, took the time to create an app that sought out news articles about drone strikes. When it would find one, it would send a push notification to the owner of the iPhone and then display a Google map of the area with a push pin of the location of the strike. He had hoped to have it released in the wild by now, but Apple keeps rejecting his application.

It’s the third time in a month that Apple has turned Drones+ away, says Josh Begley, the program’s New York-based developer. The company’s reasons for keeping the program out of the App Store keep shifting. First, Apple called the bare-bones application that aggregates news of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia “not useful.” Then there was an issue with hiding a corporate logo. And now, there’s this crude content problem.

It's this last rejection that has Josh scratching his head. How can a news aggregating application be in any way crude or objectionable? Yes, I know that many people feel that news reports from the mainstream media could easily be classified as such, but that is beside the point. This app provides a useful service for those who want to keep abreast of the latest news regarding drone strikes. It doesn't show graphic images or other caricatures of the attacks, merely a push pin and a link to the story. If it is the content that is objectionable, he may just turn to a less strict operating system for the next version.

Begley is about at his wits end over the iOS version of Drones+. “I’m kind of back at the drawing board about what exactly I’m supposed to do,” Begley said. The basic idea was to see if he could get App Store denizens a bit more interested in the U.S.’ secretive, robotic wars, with information on those wars popping up on their phones the same way an Instagram comment or retweet might. Instead, Begley’s thinking about whether he’d have a better shot making the same point in the Android Market.

Its this kind of rejection of an interesting and thought provoking app that will turn people away from walled gardens. We talked recently about Microsoft's moves toward further locking down Windows resulting in developers seeking the more open alternative of Linux. The same will happen with the iPhone. As more developers continue to have their apps rejected with little to no context, those developers will become much more frustrated with the whole process and leave for Android. Is this really the lesson that Apple wants young developers taking from this and similar experiences?